Rights, Freedom, and Sustainable Development: Looking Ahead

In this speech from the opening plenary at the 2015 G20 Interfaith Summit in Istanbul, Turkey, Katherine Marshall addresses the contemporary challenge of sustainable development, which today describes a highly complex and interrelated set of challenges, with a host of institutions involved, embedded in the phenomenon of globalization, notions of global governance (and respective responsibilities), interstate relations, and social justice. The central question is how religious factors fit in this broad challenge. This speech focuses on the links among diverse fields: economic and social development, peacebuilding, environment, and their religious dimensions. Marshall concludes that religious dimensions in all their complexity were long largely invisible and that to move forward, manifold complexities need to be recognized, especially the degree to which culture and religion are intertwined.